Kit and Carol on the Road

We had to take Ida up to Bellingham for some service work Thursday morning. Our appointment was at 8 am. After our experience in Florida, we wanted to allow plenty of time for the work to get done. So we were planning to camp overnight in Larrabee State Park. Kit left earlier with the rig because he had some errands and I came with the car (so we could shop while Ida was IN the shop). We were supposed to meet at the park. It was quite a surprise to see Kit coming up Chuckanut Drive just as I was turning on to it but I thought it was cool he was just behind me--until he disappeared. I did not have a clue that he was blinking his lights and beeping at me. It turned out Ida had developed a major oil leak and he was having to stop frequently to feed her oil. So we both got to Larrabee and it started to Pour (no afternoon hike). All of the campsites seemed to be way off level and we were not looking forward to at least a half hour of fiddling with the leveling blocks and getting soaked in the process. (not to mention dealing with the oil leak). So we drove to the dealer and left Ida there and just drove back home. It meant another trip back the next day to pick her up but it's not all that far--and we did get to Trader Joes where we picked up enough party food to last a while. Come on by for a glass of wine and snacks.

After 3 nights camping in Washington we arrived home on Monday, Sept. 28. Just missed the Oyster Run--30,000 motorbikes in downtown Anacortes. Got back in time for a change in the weather. The end of summer--and a portend of winter to come. Kit came back with a cold and now I have caught it. Life goes on. It's good to be home.

The original purpose of our trip to BC was to "do" the Okanagan Wine Country. We, of course, were doing this as good parents... Kirsten is doing her thesis on something relating to water and agriculture in the Okanagan. So we duly tasted the water and the wine (agricultural product)--and dawdled as much as we could. We had 4 wineries on our "must visit" list and visited 3 of them--plus 3 others--in the course of 3 days. The Okanagan may be the Napa Valley of BC but it doesn't yet have the tour buses--nor the big parking lots. Even though we visited the big name wineries, parking our rig was often a challenge. But the wines were excellent and we had a good time. Kit was especially excited that we got to ride our bikes into one of the wineries (chosen just because it was on our bike route.) If we make another trip we'll try to find out some good small wineries where we can actually talk to the farmers or wine makers.